Transform your WordPress website into a vibrant, interactive community by enabling users to connect and follow one another with the Ultimate Member – Followers extension. Designed specifically for the Ultimate Member ecosystem, this plugin adds a powerful social layer to your site, allowing members to build their own networks, track updates from their favorite users, and foster deeper engagement across your platform. Whether you are building a niche social network, a professional directory, or a content-sharing hub, this extension provides the essential tools to turn passive visitors into active, connected participants.
Key Features
- Follow and Unfollow Functionality: Empower your users to build a personalized network by following other members with a simple click, directly from user profiles or member directories.
- Dynamic Follower/Following Counts: Automatically display the number of followers and the number of people a user is following on their profile, providing immediate social proof and visibility.
- Customizable Follow Buttons: Seamlessly integrate follow buttons into your site’s design, ensuring a smooth user experience that encourages interaction without disrupting your site’s aesthetic.
- Dedicated Follower Lists: Provide users with dedicated tabs on their profiles to view who they are following and who is following them, making it easy to manage their community connections.
- Shortcode Support: Easily display follow buttons or member statistics anywhere on your site using flexible shortcodes, giving you complete control over where these social features appear.
- Seamless Ultimate Member Integration: Built to work natively with the Ultimate Member core plugin, ensuring consistent user data, profile management, and site performance.
Use Cases / Who It’s For
The Ultimate Member – Followers extension is an essential tool for any site owner looking to increase time-on-site and user retention through social interaction. It is perfectly suited for:
Community Builders and Social Networks: If you are creating a niche community, this plugin is the foundation for user-to-user connection. It allows members to curate their own feeds and interact with like-minded individuals, keeping them coming back to see what their peers are doing.
Content Creators and Influencers: For sites where specific users contribute content, this extension allows followers to keep track of their favorite creators. This creates a loyal following and encourages creators to publish more frequently to engage their audience.
Professional Directories and Networking Sites: In a professional context, the ability to follow colleagues, industry leaders, or potential collaborators helps build a functional network. It transforms a static directory into a dynamic space where professionals can keep tabs on industry peers.
Membership Sites: Even on sites not strictly focused on social networking, adding a “follow” feature can increase engagement by allowing members to build relationships with mentors, coaches, or other community members, adding significant value to your membership offering.
Setup / How It Works
Getting started with the Ultimate Member – Followers extension is designed to be straightforward, allowing you to activate social features on your site in minutes.
- Install and Activate: Ensure you have the core Ultimate Member plugin installed and active. Then, install and activate the Followers extension just like any other WordPress plugin.
- Configure Settings: Navigate to the Ultimate Member settings panel. You will find new options specifically for the Followers extension, where you can toggle the visibility of follow buttons and customize where they appear on user profiles.
- Manage Display: Use the extension’s settings to choose whether follower counts should be visible to the public or restricted to logged-in users, allowing you to control the privacy and social dynamics of your community.
- Placement: The plugin automatically handles the placement of follow buttons on user profiles. If you need more granular control, use the provided shortcodes to place follow buttons or follower counts within custom page templates or specific content areas.
Similar Plugins
If you are exploring other ways to add social interaction to your WordPress site, there are several alternatives to consider depending on your specific needs:
- BuddyPress: A comprehensive social networking plugin that includes built-in following and friendship features. It is a more robust, standalone solution for building a full-featured social network.
- PeepSo: A modern, modular social networking plugin that offers its own ecosystem of extensions, including follow and friend functionality, designed for high-performance community sites.
- Youzify (formerly Youzer): A plugin focused on enhancing WordPress user profiles with a wide array of social features, including follow/following systems, activity streams, and social walls.